


A Little Bit Louder and A Little Bit Worse

by GoldStarGrl



Category: Veep
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Bisexuality, Bullying, Drug Addiction, Drunkenness, Gen, I like torturing Jonah okay?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-07
Updated: 2015-06-07
Packaged: 2018-04-03 05:48:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4089247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldStarGrl/pseuds/GoldStarGrl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Love no one but your children. On that front, a mother has no choice."</p><p>He has to be someone's favorite Jonah.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Little Bit Louder and A Little Bit Worse

He was an accidental pregnancy, a fuck up thrust upon two kids who were barely old enough to drink, let alone get married, get a house, start a life together. But Pam and Roderick did all those things, because that is what you had to do when you knocked up a Kane in New Hampshire in 1986.  

He was born two weeks late, almost nine pounds, red faced and colicky for the first six months of his life. Pam stayed up for hours trying to soothe him, with no avail. This baby, this son she didn't plan, didn't really want, suddenly overtook her life. The world began and ended with him.

She gave him his father's last name and called him Jonah, after another screamer who suddenly found himself in way over his head. 

* * *

Roderick was no help with diaper changes or putting his son to bed or, even being a presence in the house. He spent long hours at the job Pam’s father had arranged for him and then headed straight to the club to drink. Pam starting taking anxiety medication and a few extra blood pressure pills as Jonah sat up and walked and spoke, trying not to think about all the pretty secretaries and paralegals her husband was buying daiquiris for.

Because she knew. Some things, a woman just knows.

He spent long weekends away on business trips Pam didn’t bother to ask about because she knew they weren’t real. Jonah went to kindergarten and told his class that he thought his dad must be a spy, going out on missions. Pam poured herself three glasses of sherry after hearing that one.

“I’m just- you’ve fucking trapped me!” Roderick burst out one night, in late August. 

He and Pam both had gotten drunk on increasingly sloppy martinis and fought like cats, screaming about each other and the fault of everyone but themselves.

“ _I_ trapped _you?_ Oh, I’m so sorry that you feel like a prisoner here! I’m so sorry your _wife and son_ make it difficult for you to get _laid_!”

“Oh fuck you, don’t put words in my mouth!”

“You feel so trapped? _Leave_ , Roderick! No one’s gonna stop you, you bastard!”

He jabbed a shaking finger, his eyes a little unfocused. “That might the first smart thing you’ve said in years, you cunt.” 

And he blew into the hallway and out the door, slamming it in the silence of the night. And somehow she knew he wasn't going to come back this time. 

Pam’s head ached, and she turned to head up to her bedroom. As she walked into the front hall though, she froze.

Her vision going double, she saw Jonah, her gangly seven-year-old, watching from the top of the front hall steps, his hands clutching the rungs that held up the railing. _Shit. Shit, he was supposed to be asleep. Good mothers check that sort of thing._

Stumbling, she sat down beside him and pushed on his ear until he bent, laying his head down on her lap. She squinted into the night, stroking the dark hair that never seemed to be brushed. Jonah didn’t cry. He just stared at the wall with hard, hard eyes. Pam didn’t push him. She could barely think herself.

When the sun came up she made made eggs and a Bloody Mary, letting Jonah watch cartoons as she served the former. He devoured them - the kid always ate like he’d never seen food before - and Pam washed down an Ambien.

Fuck. What was going to happen to him? What were they going to do? 

* * *

They lived. 

It got a little bit easier everyday, being Pam-and-Jonah-and-nobody-else. She took out books on divorce, and found they all stressed, above everything, to make sure your child knew they were loved. And she did love him, she realized, with something shamefully close to relief. Here was a little human who depended on her and needed her, whom she could pour into dreams and hopes and everything his birth kept from her.

So she invented little tasks for him to do like sorting out her increasingly large piles of medication, and praised him when he finished. She hung up every scribbly drawing he presented her with, no matter how jagged and angry the black crayon markings were. She hugged him every morning when she dropped him off at school, said “I love you” and “you are so special to me.” whenever the opportunity arose. 

She couldn’t figure out if it was enough.

* * *

Her boy grew faster than she could buy clothes for him, five-foot-ten by the time he was in sixth grade. He could look her straight in the eye before he was eleven years old - not that he ever did.

Jonah became increasingly withdrawn, spending all his time up in his room, playing video games, and watching a bizarre mix of violent cartoons and the local news on the small TV she’d bought him for his birthday.

Sometimes Pam looked out the window and saw the other kids who lived in the neighborhood, five or six boys and girls around Jonah’s age, running around, chasing each other, laughing. He was never with them, though. 

“Is that okay? Is it just that he's shy?” She asked her brother on the phone, folding laundry as she watched her son stomp home from the bus stop. Alone. Again. 

“I don’t know, Lucy’s always out with the other kids…” Jeff said doubtfully. “Shy is one thing. Kids like Jonah, they’re might be something wrong.”

“Hey.” Pam snapped, before she full realized why. “You’re one to talk.”

“Excuse me?"

“Lucy’s no picture of propriety. Fourteen-year-olds shouldn’t have so many boyfriends-“

“Oh fuck off Pam!”

“Gladly, you jackass.” She hung up, wondering if the gray vote in New Hampshire would like her brother so much if they heard the mouth on him. The front door banged around as Jonah stormed in, his hazel eyes dark as ever. 

“Hey JJ, how was school?” She forced a placid smile. He shrugged and starting climbing the stairs, slipping his backpack off on the third step.

“Hey, pick that up!”

“Oh my God, get off my fucking back!” He spat, and continued up the steps. Pam watched him go, light-up sketchers flashing like two little alarms, too stunned to respond.

She hated when her big brother was right.

* * *

"What the hell are you doing?" Mark rumbled from the couch as Jonah knelt in front of the TV, pulling a VHS tape from it's crinkly plastic container. 

Jonah's hands tightened a little around the tape. "Nothing." He said, softer than normal.

Mark rolled his eyes and kicked his feet up on the ottoman, scratching the side of his neck beard. "You're making one of your stupid videos again, aren't you? With that brown kid, Saddam or whatever."

Jonah rolled his eyes and huffed out his nose. "Sanjay is Indian." He pushed himself into standing using the side of the TV cabinet. Pam watched him press the tape hard against his leg as he spedwalked for the door.

"Wait." Mark called, almost commanded. "Jonah, look at me when I'm talking."

He tried to stop it, but Pam saw her son cringe for a spilt second before doing what he was told. Mark was his third stepdad, the man who had stolen Pam away from Brian as a rugged, charming repairman. She thought he was salt of the Earth, tough and grounded. He’d tolerated Jonah for about thirty seconds before pointing out every way in which her computer loving, speech team treasurer of a son differed from the masculine ideal.

Usually to his face.

Mark leaned back against the couch cushions, examining him like a king his servants. "How tall are you?"

Jonah shrugged, tapping his tape more rapidly against his leg.

"Answer me."

"6'5"." He spat out more venom in those two numbers than seemed allowed. Pam's stomach seized as Mark shook his head.

"Why the fuck-" He shifted in his seat, grunting. "-Would the Good Lord make you six foot fucking five if he didn't want you to play basketball?"

Jonah sighed and tried to walk away again- they has this argument once every few weeks. Jonah _hated_ basketball, probably in no small part to near constant suggestions that he should play it. From Mark, his teachers, random cashiers at the grocery store - only Sanjay and his parents, brand new immigrants from India who thought school was more important - ever let him be.

"Hey!" Mark bent forward, grabbing the side of Jonah's boney left wrist, jerking him back. Just a few inches, but Pam had to bite her cheek to keep from gasping out loud.

"You gotta stop with your fucking videos and your action figures and your plays." He told Jonah's arm. 

“HI is not a pl-“

“I’m talking.” Mark silenced him. Jonah looked determinedly down at a spot in the cream carpet, his jaw tight, trying to seem passive. Trying to seem like he couldn’t even hear him. "You don’t want people to think you’re a faggot, do you?"

"Mark." Pam said, feebly, semireproachfully. She wished he wouldn't use such language around Jonah. Especially....

She didn't know for certain, and he sure did hit on any girl who came up to him in the country club, but more than once she'd seen his eyes linger on one of the boys playing soccer outside, or the handsome news anchor's hands just a little too long.

... _He was different enough without any of that nonsense mixing in_ , she told herself. She'd need a couple handfuls of painkillers before she considered the alternative. 

Mark had ignored her protest, pulling on Jonah's arm again. 

“Get off me.” Jonah hissed, but Mark just held on tighter, raising an eyebrow.

"Do you? Answer me."

Two spots on Jonah's cheeks turned pink. “...No." He whispered.

Mark released him. "Atta boy. Now give me that shit and go practice with the hoop in the driveway.”

Jonah whipped the tape at the ground so hard there was a crinkly crack of plastic and the casing split in two.

“Fuck you, Mark!” He said, and, courage apparently drained, tore out the front door before his stepfather could respond.

Mark groaned and glared at Pam. “How can you let that freak talk to us like that?”

She stood and crossed to the window, shaking her head. “Well you’re not exactly setting a good example, Mark.”

“Oh, shut up, take some responsibility. He’s your son.”

* * *

Roderick was having another baby, and that meant he was getting married.

Dylan was born when Jonah was finishing up high school, a six pound pink cheeked angel with the blonde hair that Roderick’s first son didn’t inherit. Jonah had never met the child - _his brother_ , Pam had to correct herself every time - but occasionally a cousin would send along a picture or a note about him. She had no idea what he did with them.

2001 wasn’t so taboo for out-of-wedlock children anymore, but when Dylan’s twenty-three-year-old socialite mother got knocked up again two years later, Roderick figured it was time to tie the knot, at an obscenely fancy hotel on Cape Cod. He sent Jonah an invitation in the mail, which Pam would’ve thrown out if she knew her son wouldn’t read her the riot act - and possibly the PATRIOT, too. 

“You don’t have to go if you don’t want too.” She told him. He clutched the envelope with one hand and absent-mindedly tugged at his bangs with the other, a nervous tic he insisted he didn’t have.

“Of course I’m going, Mom. All of his friends from the bank are going to be there, they all went to Dartmouth.” He had a hard sort of glint in his eye, one Pam found herself seeing more and more.

“Okay.”

“Jesus Christ, it’s a great way to network. This is how you get ahead in this world.”

“Okay.” She nodded, feeling a bit like a broken record. _Support him. Let him know he’s loved._

She let him buy a suit that was way too expensive and looked a little ridiculous paired with the red sweater vest, but he insisted he looks “baller”, whatever that meant. She drove him to the reception hall against his wishes because with his dyslexia he was no good at reading directions.

Roderick met them at the front steps, clapping Jonah’s shoulder and grinning at Pam, like this wasn’t the first time they’d all been together in ten years - like he didn’t have this whole other life, this son and wife that they weren’t filling the roles of.

"Pam, you're looking lovely." He said, as if they were that kind of divorced couple, who hugged and sent each other Christmas cards and looked back on their marriage with warm and reaffirming feelings - _of course it was the right decision to break it off, but I'll never regret the time we had together_. What bullshit. Jonah made a face like he could smell it too. 

Pam rolled her eyes so hard it hurt and promptly drove off, back on the four-hour trip to New Hampshire.

She was only halfway home when Roderick spoke to her again, calling her cell phone with much less warmth and amicability.

It took her awhile to piece the story together - bits and pieces from Roderick and her former nieces and nephews - but what essentially happened was Jonah - her tall, tall Jonah, who had been able to pass for twenty-one since the end of middle school - got drunk off five vodka shots and a third of whiskey from the open bar. He started to yell during the toasts, telling Roderick he was a dick, Michelle a whore. One of his cousins tried to bring him outside, but he stumbled towards little Dylan, sitting in a high chair at the head table, and took a swing at him.

It took five groomsmen to pull him down and a slap across the face, courtesy of his father.

"IhatehimIhatehimIhatehimIhatehim." Jonah mumbled. "Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck."

* * *

It was slow going trying to load her drunk seventeen-year-old into the backseat the station wagon. She hadn’t been able to drag him out by the ear in ages - and even if she could reach, she wouldn’t. She didn’t want to give anymore satisfaction to Roderick and his simpering, golden skinned Michelle, who held Dylan tightly above her round, satin covered stomach as Pam dragged Jonah to the car, fussing with his towheaded curls like he'd been attacked. 

“He made everyone at the reception very uncomfortable.” Roderick hissed. Pam held up her middle finger.

“Yeah, well your reception made us very uncomfortable. Everyone can tell you’re pregnant again!” She shouted at Michelle before slamming the car door. “And maybe if you’d visited more than once a decade, he wouldn’t feel the need to drink just to get through your presence.”

She felt warm in her cheeks as her turned the key and the engine flipped over, a strange, buzzing sort of feeling rising in her stomach that she recognized as pride. If Jonah had been cogent, he might have snapped and said “ _Awww damn_!" something he had picked up from some of his disgusting rap music. 

But as she stepped on the gas, Roderick just sighed and threw up his hands. 

“Whatever. He’s your son.”

Pam pressed down harder and they shot out of the valet loop, Jonah jostling forward and groaning.

“Put on your seatbelt.” She said, testy. She wasn’t sure who she was more angry at. Jonah didn’t move and she felt her voice rise. “Jonah Kane Ryan, put on your _fucking seatbelt_.”

Still no response. Despite the fact that she was pulling onto the highway, she turned in her seat, fingers digging into the vinyl of the passenger’s seat to keep from punching something. 

“JONAH-“ 

His eyes were red. She’d noticed at the reception hall but assumed it was a side effect of drunkenness. Now though, under the shadowy lights of the interstate, she saw the shine.

He’d bunched himself up to the best of his ability against the right-hand window, sitting in the seat well as his hair brushed against the glass ledge. His lips were pressed together so tightly they’s turned white.

He was trying, desperately, fruitlessly, not to cry.

She turned back around, on auto pilot, got onto the highway and then promptly turned into the breakdown lane, punching on her hazards and twisting around to look at her son again.

“JJ, look at me. What’s the matter?”

He shook his head. Pam crossed her arms. _Christ, she needed some Vicodin._ “We’re not going anywhere until you talk to me.”

“GOD Mom, can’t you just SHUT UP and be NORMAL for ONCE?” There was no hiding the choked up, teary tone in his voice now. She reached out to touch his shoulder and he jerked away. “GOD!” 

He swayed a little, still woozy, as Pam took a deep breath, closing her eyes to the headlights that raced by, outpacing them.

There was so much of Roderick in him. So much of her too, all the dark and shaky bits from the dirty edges of both of their souls. Bizarrely, a song they used to sing in Jonah's preschool class popped into her head.  _Second verse, same as the first, but a little bit louder and a little bit worse._

“You know how the first pancake is fucked up?” Jonah slurred, jerking her back to the present. He was pounding his eyes with tight fists now, trying sloppily to mop up his tears.

“What?”

“When you make pancakes, and the first one you pour doesn’t come out right. It’s all lumpy and shit. It’s all fucked up.”

Good Lord, he really was drunk. “Sweetheart, what does this have to do with-“

“Is that what I am?”

Holy shit. Holy shit, what do you say to something like that? Pam didn’t know, she’d never been a great mother - she’d only had Jonah to practice on. But what she lacked in maternal instinct, she made up for in latent political knowledge. Growing up with Jeff, with the Kanes, aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins who won seats in the senate and the house and even the Supreme Court, taught her that platitudes could get you out of almost anything.

“Sweetheart, you are my boy. My beautiful son. Nobody is going to love you unless they see how well you love yourself, so...I think you’re just great. A great pancake.” Pam felt herself sizzle out at the end, but it wasn’t so terrible. Jonah was quiet for a minute, staring at his knees the floor forced up against his chest. He blew out a sharp breath through his nose. 

“Yeah, I know.” He coughed and straightened up, pushing himself, still a little wobbly, up into the backseat. “It was a lame ass wedding anyway.” He wiped his eyes on his expensive sleeves. “Stop at the next McDonald’s Mom, I’m starving.”

Pam knew she should tell him off for swearing. That she should tell him there was no way in hell he was getting McDonald’s after the stunt he’d pulled at his father’s wedding. She should lecture him for drinking the rest of the way back to Nashua and then spank him and take away his computer for the next month. That’s the sort of thing normal mothers do in this situation.

Instead she just exhaled. 

“No problem, hon."

Who gave a fuck what normal mothers do, she told herself and she pulled towards the golden arch on the side of the road. Normal mothers didn’t have her son.


End file.
